I would remind her, I decided.
I would.
Late March, Burnaby wrote me about the flight pen he built for our eagle. I called him immediately.
“Attached to the barn. Twenty by eighty. Sixteen-feet high.”
“She’s actually flying? Not just gimping around?”
“Early yet, but full, balanced wing extension.”
Daddy and I pulled into Mender’s the day after school let out in June, and there she was. Behind netting in her airy flight corridor, a mottled giant bird eyed us from a sunny perch. I jumped from the car and ran to see her. She sailed farther away and chittered, warning me off.
Millie. Millie the Magnificent, flying again. Inspiration for the rest of us healing birds. Her mouth gaped with threat.
“Good girl for staying wild.” I stepped closer and curtsied. “Don’t worry, beautiful. After tomorrow, you can ditch this place.”
At nine the next morning, we gathered outside the barn for the ceremony. I tossed my sweatshirt on the rain barrel and scanned the happy circle dressed in a colorful array of tank tops and tees in the late spring sun: Nora, Loomis, Gram, Daddy, Aggie, Burnaby, Harris, and even Bree—still free of psychotropics, according to Harris. Her short, patchy curls lifted in the breeze. I had visited once more in May and spent hours with them all at Gram’s—and in that trailer next to the new home Harris and Burnaby had begun framing.
These people I love.
Burnaby donned his long leather gloves and retrieved our eagle from the barn. Mender laid one hand on my shoulder and the other on Millie’s back. The raptor jostled.
Gram better be quick.
She was.
“Bless this beautiful bird, dear Father. Carry her with your breath.”
Burnaby hoisted her upward and let go. The eagle rose overhead, circled the barn, then angled across the road toward the top of a lofty fir. Loomis started singing. Nora jabbed him with her elbow until he hummed.
When Millie landed, a pair of crows mobbed her, diving at her head and back until she launched again and flapped a slow, powerful rhythm across the river and greening valley. We watched her shrink to a black speck before she merged with the forest.
The crows returned to the fir. Aggie looped her arm through her mother’s and pointed at their nest. “Three eggs up there, Mama.”
Bree planted a kiss in her daughter’s hair, tipped back her head and laughed.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Trees. A young girl. A fire. A few years back these eggs hatched, bare and sightless, into a sketch I wrote for an online fiction-writing class, where fellow writers urged me to develop the story. I don’t remember your names, but I’m grateful. Since then, fed encouragement and expertise from a raft of friends, colleagues, and other experts, the story grew feathers. I am thankful for each and every one of you, mentioned here or not.
My cohort at Mt. Hermon—Gayle Roper, Mike Richards, Janet McHenry, Marilyn Siden, and Carolyn Phillips—you shared your wisdom with me in the best of feasts. Mathematician Jerry Maurer, be assured that Celia and Burnaby depended on you. Aubrey Basart, at ten, you helped me know Aggie so much better. And Scott Cameron, because you lived oil exploration in the 1980s, so could Wyatt. Thank you all.
Many of you advised, questioned, believed, prayed, laughed, and cried me through this book, from early drafts to publication. Without you, I’d have stalled. Thank you, Avery Ullman, Laura Buys, Mona Stuart, Bev Den Bleyker, Donna Vander Griend, Ruth Droullard, Darlene Elenbaas, Shelly Kok, Angie Van De Mark, Ashley Sweeney, Mattie Wheeler, Michael Bland, Jacksón Smith, Red House Writers, Jan Soto, Lisa Largent, Laura Bostrom, Phyllis Kramer, Carol Ouellette, Elle Timmer, Jené Flittie, Dana Vail, Jeff Thomas, Diane Cochrane, Steven Kent, Bryan and Bonnie Korthuis, Mike and Cheryl Grambo, John and Jacquee Larsen, and Lissa Halls Johnson.
Artist Emma VandeVoort, your map brought the sun out. Thank you.
And thanks, Sandra Byrd. Early on you helped me build the story’s engine, then showed me the rails, and how to keep the narrative within them. Ours was a holy appointment; working with you was pure joy. Alexandra Shelley, thank you for welcoming my manuscript into your editorial gold mine, where learning from you was a life and craft-changing privilege. Your keen insight made all the difference. Ellen Notbohm, your expert eye and smart, creative suggestions helped me dress the story in its party clothes. Burnaby and I thank you.
Brooke Warner and She Writes Press, thanks for giving this book the best of homes. I couldn’t be gladder that you said yes. Lauren Wise, Shannon Green, Julie Metz, Tabitha Lahr and the rest of the She Writes team, your hallmark excellence stamped this book. And Crystal Patriarche and the Book Sparks team? I know you’ll hit the ground with expert footing and a long stride. I’m already grateful.
Finally and especially, thank you, Blake—my husband, my love, my best reader. And thank you, Father, for everything.
For grace, everywhere.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author photo © Laura Buys
For most of her life, Pacific Northwest naturalist, photographer, and award-winning author Cheryl Grey Bostrom, M.A., has lived in the rural and wild lands that infuse her writing. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including the American Scientific Affiliation’s God and Nature Magazine, for which she’s a regular photo essayist. A member of the Redbud Writers Guild, she has also authored two nonfiction books. This is her first novel.
SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS
She Writes Press is an independent publishing company founded to serve women writers everywhere. Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.
Toward that Which is Beautiful by Marian O’Shea Wernicke. $16.95, 978-1-63152-759-3. In June of 1964 in a small town in the Altiplano of Peru, Sister Mary Katherine—a young American nun afraid of her love for an Irish priest with whom she has been working—slips away from her convent with no money and no destination. Over the next eight days, she encounters both friendly and dangerous characters and travels an interior journey of memory and desire that leads her, finally, to a startling destination.
The River by Starlight by Ellen Notbohm. $16.95, 978-1-63152-335-9. Annie and Adam Fielding’s simple dreams of home and family on the Montana frontier shatter in the face of malevolent post-partum illness whose only treatment is involuntarily commitment to the state hospital for the insane.
Eliza Waite by Ashley Sweeney. $16.95, 978-1-63152-058-7. When Eliza Waite chooses to leave a stagnant life in rural Washington State and join the masses traveling north to Alaska in 1898 during the tumultuous Klondike Gold Rush, she encounters challenges and successes in both business and love.
The Rooms Are Filled by Jessica Null Vealitzek. $16.95, 978-1-93831-458-2. The coming-of-age story of two outcasts—a nine-year-old boy who just lost his father, and a closeted young woman—brought together by circumstance.
Shrug by Lisa Braver Moss. $16.95, 978-1-63152-638-1. In 1960s Berkeley, teenager Martha Goldenthal just wants to do well in school and have a normal life. But her home life is a cauldron of kooky ideas, impossible demands, and explosive physical violence—and there’s chaos on the streets. When family circumstances change and Martha winds up in her father’s care, she must stand up to him, or forgo college.
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